Veni, Vidi, Scripsi

Five Minutes with the New EVE Character Creator

The big drop for Incursion went live at last, and there is a ton of stuff in it. Really, look at all that stuff in the patch notes.

That is about a 1.2 GB download, which is about double the payload of your typical EVE Online expansion.

And while the Sansha Nation incursion is the big deal, the namesake of the expansion, the new character creator is the first new thing people will likely run into.

Of course, the MMO tradition… and especially the EVE Online tradition… is that you make your character and then you are stuck with it for freakin’ ever.

So, remembering how I rushed through the avatar portrait creation back when I first started playing EVE, and how I have had to look at the same crappy avatar ever since, I thought I had better have a practice run before I went for my main character.

So I jumped in with the second character on my account, Percy Dovetonsils, and within moments I had created… gay porn.

Percy has the most muscular legs...

I mean, Tom of Finland look out, we’ve got the character generator dedicated to your memory. It really looks like some unholy merger of Gary Gannon, Ryan Verniere, and Brad Pitt.

Eventually I did figure out how to put some clothes on him. But then I clicked next and went to portrait selection, where I chose this.

Percy Styling

And then I accepted my portrait, not having read the key paragraph in the patch notes:

Current characters will have a grace period before having to commit to a new character avatar and portrait. During this grace period you can take your time before finalizing your new avatar and portrait to suit your tastes. NOTE: Once you accept your portrait design, you are committed to it!

Whoops! I guess I won’t be able to go back and change anything. Or even prove that I put clothes on him.

Fortunately, I was doing this with a test character and not my main.

The full body avatar creation tool is interesting. You can grab and tweak features pretty readily, though how visible these adjustments are with you in-game avatar I couldn’t say.

I am surprised at the limited options for clothing. Maybe the Caldari are just boring dressers or something, but the selection was pretty limited.

Not that it matters that much I suppose. Once you’ve created your full clothed (or unclothed if you prefer) body, I am not sure you can even see it again as things stand at the moment.

But now I know, when I make Wilhelm’s body, don’t accept the portrait design until I am ready. Grace period. Grace period.

I have already seen people in local who accepted their portraits not knowing they would be stuck with what they chose.

Actually CCP have since announced they realise people are getting caught out, so….

“…..If you are not happy with the character portrait that you have made for your character, do not despair. In the next few days we are going to give everyone who has already customized their character at that time one re-customization for use during the grace period. This will allow you to restart the character portrait creation process with your current character portrait as the starting point.” ~ CCP Fallout

@WTM – I saw that, though I didn’t get around to mentioning it. (There is a link to it in my “posts form other blogs” side bar.) But they delayed the patch a day, so I was going to mention it when the patch finally went up. Or maybe I won’t.

I do like the Percy Dovetonsil’s portrait more and more though. Wilhelm might end up with something like that, since I found out you couldn’t zoom the portrait in so that it was just a giant eyeball.